


A Private Moment

by Evandar



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Communication, Consensual Incest, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Parent/Child Incest, Post-Battle of Five Armies, Stress Relief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:49:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7643029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>One thing that they agreed on, early in their tangled and convoluted courtship, was that politics have no place in their bedroom. Their ideas are too different: Thranduil has seen too much of the world to want much to do with it, and Legolas – no longer young, but still sheltered in his father’s kingdom – wishes to understand more of it. He doesn’t chafe, though Thranduil seems to fear he does; he simply wants to see. It does not always work, and though he has long been taking advantage of his position to offer advice, his father – far shrewder than himself – has never been overly inclined to listen to it.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Private Moment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maitimiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maitimiel/gifts).



> Your prompts for this fest were fantastic, Maitimiel - I wanted to write all of them! I really hope that you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it.
> 
> This fic mostly follows book canon with some parts lifted from Jackson's movie-verse.

His father looks as exhausted as Legolas feels. Here, in the relative privacy of their pavilion, Thranduil is willing to be less than perfect. He casts off his crown and his long, black robe and drops onto his bed with a soft huff that makes him sound like an Elfling. Legolas peers down at him. There is a line between his father’s brows – one that appears only when he is extremely stressed – and Legolas feels a pang in his chest. He aches to soothe those stresses away.

But.

One thing that they agreed on, early in their tangled and convoluted courtship, was that politics have no place in their bedroom. Their ideas are too different: Thranduil has seen too much of the world to want much to do with it, and Legolas – no longer young, but still sheltered in his father’s kingdom – wishes to understand more of it. He doesn’t chafe, though Thranduil seems to fear he does; he simply wants to see. It does not always work, and though he has long been taking advantage of his position to offer advice, his father – far shrewder than himself – has never been overly inclined to listen to it.

He moves closer to his father’s side. He sheds his bow and quiver and his long white knives. He sheds too his tunic, which falls to a muddy green heap on the floor in his wake. He can feel his father’s eyes fixed upon him as he unfastens his boots and – finally – strips out of his leggings. Left only in his undershirt, he is barely decent, but he feels far more presentable. His father may have had a day of negotiations with Dain Ironfoot, the Master of Laketown, and the newly heralded Dragonslayer, but Legolas has been shoring up the crumbling walls of Dale. In the _rain_.

Besides, his father has seen him in far less than a simple shirt.

He leaves his clothes where they lie and turns away. He hears a soft noise and a rustle from the bed as he makes his way to the side table where someone – probably Galion – thought to lay a small feast for dinner. Cold cuts of roast meat and crisp winter vegetables are piled high on platters – it is near obscene given how little the people around them have, made worse by Thranduil’s obvious lack of appetite. Legolas steals a grape from the selection of fruits purely so _something_ on the table can say it has been sampled, and he reaches for the wine. He pours two goblets and, after a momentary hesitation, returns to his father with the decanter as well.

His father, as he suspected, has been watching him closely. Once, in years long past, Legolas would have seen in that gaze nothing but an invitation to leave the wine and the rest of his clothes and spend the rest of the evening in bliss in his father’s arms. The idea is tempting still, and he feels his cock stir at the thought, but he has grown in wisdom since those days and knows that his father needs comfort other than the physical.

He settles onto the bed at Thranduil’s side and hands him one of the goblets. His father’s other hand, unsurprisingly, drops onto his bare thigh; a gentle weight that somehow manages to be both reassuring and incredibly intimate. 

“One of us should speak to Galion about rationing,” he says. 

His father snorts into his goblet. “How to explain that our surplus is to go to Dwarves and Men…” he mutters.

Legolas winces. His father may be reserved and unwilling to involve himself in matters beyond his borders, but he is not so cruel as to leave entire kingdoms to starve to death. The Dwarves may have claimed he did not help them when Smaug came – and it is true that his father did not lead their army against the dragon – but they have clearly forgotten the shelter and supplies he offered them. Worse, some of their people - _Tauriel_ \- have forgotten that too.

He shifts onto his side and tangles his fingers in his father’s hair. Thranduil looks at him, and Legolas sees clearly the shadow in his eyes. The Battle and its aftermath, Tauriel’s betrayal, the oncoming winter…these are all things that weigh heavily on his father’s mind. He leans in and kisses the little crease between his father’s brows. He presses a kiss lower, to the tip of his nose, and then lower still. His father’s lips are soft and pliant beneath his own; slightly sticky from the wine, they part easily, inviting Legolas to kiss deeper. He does.

They must not go further than this. Not tonight. Not until they are safely returned to their woodland fortress where the stone walls of his father’s chamber are thick and capable of protecting them from even Elven hearing. No amount of comfort is worth the risk that they will be discovered – their relationship is forbidden. _Maeglin’s sin_ : to love too closely a relative. That Legolas is as wed to Thranduil (for wedding and bedding are the same thing amongst the Eldar) as his own mother was would earn them nothing but hatred and scorn from all races. They would not be understood.

He pulls away reluctantly. His father is no longer frowning, at least, and his hand is significantly higher up Legolas’ thigh than it was when they started.

“Mithrandir spoke at the meeting,” his father says after a moment. Legolas tries to hide his smile – his father has never approved of wizards. “’Ere he arrived to find the dragon slain and Thorin Oakenshield in a fit of madness, he was involved in a confrontation in Dol Guldur.”

Legolas starts. As far as he knew, none had ventured there ever since their people abandoned the fortress to the shadows that invaded it. His father had drawn them all north centuries ago, and protected their shrinking kingdom with enchantments learned in his youth. 

“What did he find?” he asks. He has his suspicions. He was young when Dol Guldur was abandoned, but not too young to be incapable of remembering the darkness that grew in the shadows.

His father drains his goblet. After a moment, he discards it in favour of the decanter Legolas had placed on the nightstand. “The White Council,” he says, “finally took note of the troubles that have plagued us. Mithrandir, Lord Elrond, and the Lady Galadriel all travelled to that place. They found wraiths – one, Mithrandir claims, is the remains of Sauron. They forced him to take a fiery shape and made him flee south, so he told us.”

There’s not a great deal that Legolas can think to say to that. He, unlike his father, has never faced the Dark Lord directly. Nor has he faced any evil greater than the giant spiders that have been weaving their sinister webs through the boughs of his home since childhood. He drinks deeply of his own goblet, thinking.

“You suspected so for years,” he says, as he knows his father has done so. Many times has his father shared his fears and suspicions – mostly when their disagreements over how to deal with the forest’s spider population grew too passionate. He licks his lips and continues hesitantly: a closer alliance between the peoples of the north is _his_ idea – one that has been refused several times over the years, but one that he still must pursue. “And so you are proved correct. But surely the coming winter is a greater hazard for all here than the threat of a weakened Dark Lord now removed from our borders?”

“So it is, and yet the meeting was derailed.” His father sighs and raises the decanter to his lips. “These children I must meet with have no idea of what Sauron is capable of, and yet his name causes such panic amongst them – as if he had not been our neighbour for most of an Age.” He drinks deeply. A droplet of wine trickles from the corner of his mouth and down his jaw, and it is far too much for Legolas to resist. He leans in to lick the wine away, and when his father turns to capture his lips in a kiss, he cannot resist that either.

Thranduil sets his drink aside and takes Legolas’ own from his loose grasp before it can spill. In return Legolas pulls his father over him, parting his legs to that he might rest between them. He can feel his father’s cock beginning to harden against his hip and he _knows_ that they are about to go too far. He can hear movement outside their pavilion as guards move about on patrol. His father’s hand – still on his thigh – traces a path upwards to the juncture between his legs, and the back of a knuckle rubs gently over Legolas’ sack.

(He is often called wild and reckless by his peers. What they don’t realise is that his nature is inherited, and that the King they know to be so cold is as reckless as his lover-son.)

“We would have to be quiet,” he murmurs.

His father’s lips twist into a rueful smile. Legolas knows that he much prefers their lovemaking to be loud and in the privacy of the royal apartments of their palace, they can afford to be. Not here. Never here.

“How did I come by such a responsible child,” Thranduil teases him, but he rolls off, back onto the bed at Legolas’ side, and retrieves the decanter of wine from the nightstand once more. He offers it to Legolas. “What restraints we must suffer in the name of new alliances.”

Legolas blinks at him. His father’s words are a far greater gift than the wine and – reckless once more – he pulls his father down into another deep, desperate kiss.

Thranduil, finally, has chosen to take heed of Legolas’ advice. Soon, he can hope, it will be put into practise. Soon they will have ties to the world outside of their woodland home. It will be worth the wait.


End file.
